Juan Manuel's masterpiece is the Conde Lucanor (also named the Book of Patronio and the Book of Examples), in four parts, the first of which is divided into fifty-one chapters. Like the Decamerone, like the Canterbury Tales—but with greater directness—the Conde Lucanor is the oriental apologue embellished in terms of the vernacular. The convention of the "moral lesson" is maintained, and each chapter of the First Part (the others are rather unfinished notes) ends with a declaration to the effect that "when Don Johan heard this example he found it good, ordered it to be set down in this book, and added these verses"—the verses being a concise summary of the prose. The Conde Lucanor is the Spanish equivalent of the Arabian Nights, with Patronio in the part of Scheherazade, and Count Lucanor (as who should say Juan Manuel) as the Caliph. Boccaccio used the framework first in Italy, but Juan Manuel was before him by six years, for the Conde Lucanor was written not later than 1342. The examples are taken from experience, and are told with extraordinary narrative skill. Simplicity of theme is matched by simplicity of expression. The story of father and son (Enxemplo II.), of the Dean of Santiago and the Toledan Magician (Enxemplo XI.), of Ferrant González and Nuño Laynez, a model of dramatic presentation (Enxemplo XVI.), are perfect masterpieces in little.
Juan Manuel is an innovator in Castilian prose, as is Juan Ruiz in Castilian verse. He lacks the merriment, the genial wit of the Archpriest; but he has the same gift of irony, with an added note of cutting sarcasm, and a more anxious research for the right word. He never forgets that he has been the Regent of Castile, that he has mingled with kings and queens, that he has cowed emirs and barons, and led his troopers at the charge; and it is well that he never unbends, since his unsmiling patrician humour gives each story a keener point. In mind as in blood he is the great Alfonso's kinsman, and the relation becomes evident in his treatment of the prose sentence. He inherited it with many another splendid tradition, and, while he preserves entire its stately clearness, he polishes to concision; he sets with conscience to the work, sharpening the edges of his instrument, exhibits its possibilities in the way of trenchancy, and puts it to subtler uses than heretofore. In his hands Castilian prose acquires a new ductility and finish, and his subjects are such that dramatists of genius have stooped to borrow from him. In him (Enxemplo XLV.) is the germ of the Taming of the Shrew (though it is scarcely credible that Shakespeare lifted it direct), and from him Calderón takes not merely the title—Count Lucanor—of a play, but the famous apologue in the first act of Life is a Dream, an adaptation to the stage of one of Juan Manuel's best instances (Enxemplo XXXI.). Pilferings by Le Sage are things of course, and Gil Blas benefits by its author's reading. Translations apart—and they are forthcoming—the Conde Lucanor is one of the books of the world, and each reading of it makes more sensible the loss of the verses which, one would fain believe, might place the writer as high among poets as among prose writers.
The Poema de Alfonso Onceno, also known as his Rhymed Chronicle, was unearthed at Granada in 1573 by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, and an extract from it, printed fifteen years later by Argote de Molina, encouraged the idea that Alfonso XI. wrote it. That King's sole exploit in literature is a handbook on venery, often attributed to Alfonso the Learned. The fuller, but still incomplete text of the Poema, first published in 1864, discloses (stanza 1841) the author's name as Rodrigo Yañez or Yannes. It is to be noted that he speaks of rendering Merlin's prophecy in the Castilian tongue:—
"Yo Rodrigo Yannes la noté
En lenguaje castellano."
Everything points to his having translated from a Galician original, being himself a Galician who hispaniolised his name of Rodrigo Eannes. Strong arguments in favour of this theory are advanced by great authorities—Professor Cornu, and that most learned lady, Mme. Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. In the first place, the many technical defects of the Poema vanish upon translation into Galician; and next, the verses are laced with allusions to Merlin, which indicate a familiarity with Breton legends, common enough in Galicia and Portugal, but absolutely unknown in Spain. Be that as it prove, the Poema interests as the last expression of the old Castilian epic. Here we have, literally, the swan-song of the man-at-arms, chanting the battles in which he shared, commemorating the names of comrades foremost in the van, reproducing the martial music of the camp juglar, observing the set conventions of the cantares de gesta. His last appearance on any stage is marked by a portent—the suppression of the tedious Alexandrine, and the resolution into two lines of the sixteen-syllabled verse. Yañez is an excellent instance of the third-rate man, the amateur, who embodies, if he does not initiate, a revolution. His own system of octosyllabics in alternate rhymes has a sing-song monotony which wearies by its facile copiousness, and inspiration visits him at rare and distant intervals. But the step that costs is taken, and a place is prepared for the young romance in literature.
No precise information offers concerning Rabbi Sem Tob of Carrión, the first Jew who writes at length in Castilian. His dedication to Pedro the Cruel, who reigned from 1350 to 1369, enables us to fix his date approximately, and to guess that he was, like others of his race, a favourite with that maligned ruler. Written in the early days of the new reign, Sem Tob's Proverbios Morales, consisting of 686 seven-syllabled quatrains, are more than a metrical novelty. His collection of sententious maxims, borrowed mainly from Arabic sources and from the Bible, is the first instance in Castilian of the versified epigram which was to produce the brilliant Proverbs of Santillana, who praises the Rabbi as a writer of "very good things," and reports his esteem as a "grand trovador." In Santillana's hands the maxims are Spanish, are European; in Sem Tob's they are Jewish, oriental. The moral is pressed with insistence, the presentation is haphazard; while the extreme concision of thought, the exaggerated frugality of words, tends to obscurity. Against this is to be set the exalted standard of the teaching, the daring figures of the writer, his happiness of epithet, his note of austere melancholy, and his complete triumph in naturalising a new poetic genre.
It has been sought to father on Sem Tob three other pieces: the Treatise of Doctrine, the Revelation of a Hermit, and the Danza de la Muerte. The Treatise, a catechism in octosyllabic triplets with a four-syllabled line, is by Pedro de Berague, and is only curious for its rhythm, imitated from the rime couée, and for being the first work of its kind. Sem Tob was in his grave when the ancient subject of the Argument between Body and Soul was reintroduced by the maker of the Revelation of a Hermit, wherein the souls are figured as birds, gracious or hideous as the case may be. The third line of this didactic poem gives its date as 1382, and this is confirmed by the evidence of the metre and the presence of an Italian savour. In the case of the anonymous Danza de la Muerte the metre once more fixes the period of composition at about the end of the fourteenth century. Most European literatures possess a Danse Macabré of their own; yet, though the Castilian is probably an imitation of some unrecognised French original, it is the oldest known version of the legend. It is not rash to assume that its immediate occasion was the last terrific outbreak of the Black Death, which lasted from 1394 to 1399. Death bids mankind to his revels, and forces them to join his dance. The form is superficially dramatic, and the thirty-three victims—pope, emperor, cardinal, king, and so forth, a cleric and a layman always alternating—reply to the summons in a series of octaves. Whoever composed the Spanish version, he must be accepted as an expert in the art of morbid allegory. Odd to say, the Catalan Carbonell, constructing his Dance of Death in the sixteenth century, rejects this fine Castilian version for the French of Jean de Limoges, Chancellor of Paris.
A writer who represents the stages of the literary evolution of his age is the long-lived Chancellor, Pero López de Ayala (1332–1407). His career is a veritable romance of feudalism. Living under Alfonso XI., he became the favourite of Pedro the Cruel, whom he deserted at the psychological moment. He chronicles his own and his father's defection in such terms as Pepys or the Vicar of Bray might use:—"They saw that Don Pedro's affairs were all awry, so they resolved to leave him, not intending to return." Pedro the Cruel, Enrique II., Juan I., Enrique III.—Ayala served all four with profit to his pouch, without flagrant treason. Loyalty he held for a vain thing compared with interest; yet he earned his money and his lands in fight. He ever strove to be on the winning side, but luck was hostile when the Black Prince captured